Iran After the War
U.S. strategy hinges on weakening the IRGC without collapsing the entire regime.
By: Kamran Bokhari
A day earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the war may take “some time” but would not drag on for years.
Officials in both governments have stressed that, unlike the post-9/11 interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the objective this time is not outright regime change and state reconstruction.
Instead, the strategy is to degrade Iran’s capabilities to coerce the regime to change its behavior – without triggering total state collapse.
However, in the Islamic Republic, where the regime’s ideological core and the institutions of state are deeply fused together, this may be a tall order.
It is important to recognize that, despite their close coordination, U.S. and Israeli interests are not identical, and neither are their war aims.
Israel, by virtue of its geography and perception of an acute threat from Iran, has strong incentives to seek the decisive weakening – if not outright collapse – of the Iranian regime.
The U.S., as a global power pursuing strategic retrenchment under a revised global strategy, speaks of denying Iran nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles but not transforming its entire regime.
While Israel relies heavily on Washington’s superior military capabilities, the Trump administration is wary of being drawn into an open-ended conflict, consistent with the president’s long-standing opposition to “forever wars.”
These differences notwithstanding, the core challenge lies in the nature of the Iranian regime itself, whose ideological foundations constrain its willingness – and arguably its capacity – to accommodate U.S. demands without undermining its own legitimacy.
Indeed, this structural rigidity helps explain why the Trump administration ultimately opted for a major military operation rather than rely solely on coercive diplomacy.
Washington assumed that the 12-day Israel-Iran war last June – during which the U.S. conducted limited strikes on Iran’s hardened nuclear facilities – would demonstrate its escalation dominance and thus might increase Tehran’s receptivity to compromise.
Instead, the resumption of negotiations was overtaken by widespread Iranian protests, which ended only when the regime cracked down in early January, further hardening positions in Tehran and narrowing the political space for compromise.
Although Trump warned Tehran against its brutal crackdown and voiced support for the nationwide protests, he was not prepared at that stage to abandon the diplomatic track.
Washington still assumed that mounting external and internal pressure would compel the regime to reassess and move toward compromise.
Indeed, Iranian officials signaled tactical flexibility, suggesting that sanctions relief and deescalation were within reach.
Yet after three rounds of talks, it became evident that Tehran was calling Washington’s bluff; it intended to drag out negotiations, absorbing any limited military strikes if necessary, while preserving its indigenous enrichment capability.
Once it was convinced that neither continued negotiations nor symbolic strikes would meaningfully alter Tehran’s trajectory, Washington’s dilemma became how to escalate without stumbling into an Iraq- or Afghanistan-style regime change intervention, with all the costs and long-term liabilities such campaigns entail.
The administration’s answer was to activate a contingency plan long under development.
It would launch a decapitation strike targeting the regime’s senior leadership – including the supreme leader himself – followed by a systematic campaign to degrade its center of gravity, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
The early phases appear to have been successful, but dismantling the IRGC’s institutional and operational capacity is inherently a longer-term undertaking.
This is particularly true given the need to attrit Iran’s ballistic and cruise missile forces and its large drone arsenal, which Iran has used to target U.S. military facilities across the region alongside Arab states and Israel.
The Trump administration faces a narrow window of opportunity in which to achieve its objectives.
U.S. midterm elections are eight months away, Trump’s approval ratings are sagging, and war with Iran is unpopular, even within chunks of the president’s base.
It is critical for the administration that it calibrate its operations to minimize mission creep.
However, this constraint limits the extent to which the U.S. can weaken the Iranian regime.
More important, there is the question of what comes after the war.
When the dust settles, the U.S. will need someone capable of running Iran, because the alternative – to leave it in a state of anarchy – would hurt the president politically, undermine U.S. interests in the region and jeopardize its entire retrenchment strategy.
Despite his rhetoric urging Iranians to seize control of the government, Trump knows that a public uprising is insufficient for achieving a new political order.
Only elements of the existing Iranian elite, especially its security establishment, are capable of maintaining order and essential government functions.
This is why Trump called on the IRGC, the regular armed forces (known as the Artesh) and law enforcement personnel to stand down.
In the ideal scenario for Washington, the fault lines within the Iranian regime become a strategic asset, enabling it to influence the future shape of the regime while avoiding state collapse or the need for full-scale occupation.
For this to work, the U.S. would need to alter the balance of power between the only two institutions within the Islamic Republic capable of holding the country together: the IRGC and the Artesh.
As the regime’s center of gravity, the IRGC would need to be sufficiently weakened so that it can no longer dominate decision-making, opening political and operational space for the more secular and nationalist Artesh to assume a greater role in governance.
Expecting to topple the IRGC and replace it with the Artesh would be asking too much.
For one thing, in wartime, disentangling their functions is inherently difficult, since both share responsibility for national defense – with the IRGC maintaining a decisive advantage.
A bigger problem is the IRGC’s long-standing dominance in Iran’s economy and major sectors, including energy, nuclear and missile programs, domestic security and telecommunications.
While the IRGC was building this empire, similar capacities in the Artesh were allowed to atrophy.
After all, until last June, it had been nearly two generations since Iran’s conventional military was called to fight a war.
This is probably why Trump explicitly called on both institutions to come forward, hoping for a coordinated regime transition.
The Trump administration’s approach to Venezuela suggests it may be predisposed to secretly engage with alternative power brokers to manage transitions.
In Venezuela’s case, Washington exerted pressure on President Nicolas Maduro’s regime while also signaling to other potential interlocutors, including opposition and security officials, that it was open to other options beyond outright confrontation.
With that in mind, it is possible that the U.S. is maintaining backchannel communication with elements of the IRGC and the Artesh, even as major combat operations continue.
Obviously, there are stark differences between the situation in Venezuela and Iran.
However, the presence within the IRGC of pragmatic elements potentially more aligned with the Artesh worldview suggests the potential for a coalition that could stabilize the country should the clerical hierarchy erode, which appears likely.
If the U.S. is going to leave an Iranian state intact and avoid imposing direct rule, there may be no alternative to the creation of a transitional authority comprising the Artesh and elements of the IRGC.
The slow evolution of the Islamic Republic has been accelerating since last June.
The theocracy is likely gone, and a new military-led order will be long in the making.
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